The Game

When 8 rowers sing the anthem...

...it's so bad, it's good.

From a weekend of watching that offered many, many magical moments for Canadians, my favourite was watching and listening to Canada's big eights crew of rowers singing the national anthem.

Many gold medal  winners cry, many smile and wave as the flag goes up and the national anthem is played. It is always a moment of real emotion for the winners, especially the unexpected ones like Carol Huynh who picked up a wrestling gold.
But these nine men offered up something different.

This was not smiles and giggles.This was not athletes going through the motions, mouthing the words because they know they're on TV.
These nine men (including cox Brian Price) sang like they'd just spent the last few hours in a pub,
with a gusto, passion and joy you rarely see put into our national anthem. There were enough of them that their voices came across as a male choir, easily heard above the instrumental soundtrack.
But they were horribly out of tune, completely out of sync, and several of them added their own melodic embellishments like 8-year-olds singing Happy Birthday.
And it was great.
- Rick Hughes

Canadian gusher answers critics

Whew, we needed that seven-medal weekend gusher.

It certainly answered the New York Times headline 'Woe Canada', which quoted several Canuck handwringers.

And the four by late Saturday doubled the forecast in this corner. With seven, the overall prediction of 10 is in peril. As previously noted, I wouldn't be happier to be wrong.

Moreover, local athletes are on pace to get the five I called for. Tonya Verbeek of Beamsville won a wrestling bronze and St. Catharines rower Melanie Kok also scooped up a third placing.

If Usain Bolt sets a world record in the 200 metres, can that possibly be as big as Michael Phelps' eight in the pool?

By two measures, yes. If he wins so easily in the longer sprint, and with as much showmanship, he has dominated his discipline by a far greater margin.

World's fastest man still goes to the guy on land, moreover. And to win so emphatically in a sport that has a much wider application around the world, and to do so from a background on a dirt track, is arguably the tougher assignment.

'Diving' for medals

Several Canadians were hurt in the ensuing scramble when Swedish wrestler Ara Abrahamian tossed his bronze medal away in disgust.

Ba-da-boom.

But seriously folks, this is no laughing matter. We understand we tend to come on late in Games with medals, still a goose egg closing on the mid-point?

Nonetheless, we'll boldly predict two by late tomorrow night, a few more Sunday and 10 overall, as originally forecast, when it's all over.

John Kernaghan

China the new gold standard?

With 22 gold medals before the midway point, a dozen more than the Americans, China is charging through their Olympics like a true mega-power. Without Michael Phelps and 20 medals in the pool, the U.S. would be seriously behind in the total medals instead of barely trailing 35-34.
Mind now that the American powerhouse track and field team hasn't kicked in yet. That's not a Chinese strength.
And look out Canada down the line if they throw a few hundred thousand athletes at rowing and canoe/kayak.
It's scary, much like the old Soviet bloc programs, when a country can devote millions of dollars and people pushed by a totalitarian regime.

Aussie sailor returns to scene of grime

Give an honourary medal to Elise Rechichi for going back on the dirty water that led to a year of sickness.
The Aussie lost almost 20 per cent of her body weight, was in out of hospital with dehydration and hallucinations and wondered if she'd ever realize her Olympic dream.
She fell off a dock and into the water off Qingdao in 2005 and accidentally swallowed a mouthful of water.
"It think in that mouthful there were probably millions of bacteria," she told The Sydney Morning Herald after recovering in 2007.
Rechichi is competing in the two-hand 470 class.
Her experience so unnerved Burlington sailor Oskar Johansson he was considering masks and changing his position on his boat to avoid spray from the toxic sea.
For the full story on Rechichi, see

Finally, a sore loser

Place a laurel, the real thorny kind, on the head of Canadian fencer Sherraine Schalm for saying what no other Canuck dares in these Games:
"It really sucks to lose, it's so painful."
No happy to be here, no I did my best, no I'll now be a cheerleader.
Schalm went further than merely feeling bad for losing, she described in graphically:
"It's like I imagine being a man, it's like being kicked in the nuts repeatedly. You feel like you want to curl up and die."
Schalm, Canada's brightest hope in fencing, was under extreme pressure from all fronts, said Hamilton fencer Josh McGuire.
"She's our golden girl. While making the top 16 is OK for the rest of us, great things are expected of her."
Schalm, who has suffered from depression in the past and found solace in a Trappist monastery, joked that her psychologist "is going to kill me when he reads" her comments.
Canadians should salute her for her abject honesty. Other athletes should be as demanding as she is.
John Kernaghan

The other side of Olympic glory

While Michael Phelps continues to turn everything he touches into gold and enjoy the most spectacular Olympics ever -- though it's not over yet -- last night's women's team gymnastics event showed the flip side of the spotlight.
Anyone who watched the agony etched on American Alicia Sacamone's face after her bobbles on the balance beam and floor exercise crushed her country's gold-medal dream couldn't help but understand, if only vicariously, the risk each of these athletes is taking. Wheaties boxes and million-dollar endorsement deals are waiting for the winners. But for those who happen to have their worst day in front of hundreds of millions of TV viewers and feel they let an entire country down, the pain is real. And you have to imagine lingering, too.
If you've ever had a kid play a position in a team sport that centres them out -- all you goalie parents know what I'm talking about -- you'll understand this. Except magnify whatever stress you've ever suffered watching your child play by about a million per cent.
Sure it's just sports, but she'll live with this the rest of her life.
That's a tough sentence for a 20-year-old to had to serve.

-- Scott Radley

Too nice?

Not much was expected of the American men's gymnastics team. Absent their two top performers due to injury, they were supposed to get crushed by the Chinese, Japanese, and two or three other countries.
Yet as seems to so often happen, the Americans rose to the challenge on Monday night and shocked everyone by claiming a bronze. Each competitor stepped up and nailed his routine. No nerves. No letdown.
The Chinese, meanwhile, were under huge pressure to win at home in arguably the most important medal to the locals after table tennis. Failure would be unacceptable. To their credit, they responded brilliantly and matched or exceeded every hope. Not only did they win gold, but they did it in spectacular and flawless fashion.
On the flip side, we have more than a few Canadian athletes who've posted disappointing performances, far below their best outcome, at these Olympics. Whether the magnitude of the event or whatever, instead of coming up big when they needed to, they shrunk in the spotlight. Yet afterwards, athlete after athlete mentions that they're happy with their effort and are enjoying the Olympic experience.
Question is, are the Americans and Chinese doing well simply because of the massive dollars spent on training, or is it an attitude thing? Are their results simply bought, or does the expectation that they're in Beijing to win -- or at least challenge for a medal in every event rather than just experience the Games -- make the biggest difference? This after all isn't house league, it's world-class competition.
If the Canadian public demanded medals rather than merely good efforts, would we be seeing better results or will nothing ever change until funding matches the top countries?
Honestly, there's no doubt the latter is a gigantic factor. But it's hard not to think the former might not be a significant part of the equation, too.

-- Scott

One more medal and we pull ahead of Atlantis

It's not that things are going badly for Canada in Beijing, but heading into Tuesday morning's events we're currently trailing Indonesia, Vietnam, Chinese Taipei, Zimbabwe, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan (betcha couldn't even  find those last two on a map) in the medal standings.
Oh well, at least we're keeping pace with Vatican City.

-- Scott Radley

It's not going well for Canada, for a reason

Watching Daniel Nestor, a former gold medalist, and his partner Frederic Niemeyer get eliminated by Great Britain's Murray brothers, it underscored the growing anxiety across the country that these Games are not going well for Canada. Sure Niemeyer was feeling the pressure of playing with the 2000 gold medalist and double-faulted twice but the key double fault was by Nestor in game 3 of the deciding set.
These Olympics, so far, are starting to look like those of the 1970s for Canada where reporting must highlight the effort and personalities, rather than the results.
True in some of the sports on the early roster, like women's badminton and men's field hockey, Canada's real victory was in qualifying for The Games. But there are the tennis doubles gone, the women's eights walloped in their heat and forced to go the repechages route (like the men's unsuccessful eights four years ago), Susan Nattrass bowing out in the early round in what might be her final Games, and all those Canadian records set in the pool but many of them falling short of advancing to the semis and finals.

It doesn't have a good feel to it, but maybe a surprise medal will get this thing turned around. Still, it's starting to show that we decided to put money into this Olympiad far too late. As mentioned every Olympics, we need a far better policy of fitness and amateur sports in this country. It's not just about medals, it's about overall national health. But medals would follow, because if you widen the base of the athletic pyramid, the top can climb much higher.

But that would require political vision, and likely more taxes. The latter we can't sell in this country, the former we can't buy.

---Steve Milton